Institutional Distance and the Lived Experience of Actors in the Contemporary MNC: The Role of Positionality

ABSTRACT International human resource management (IHRM) and its larger sibling of international business (IB) have cross‐fertilized each other for many years. In this paper, we suggest that IHRM research's nuanced appreciation for new patterns of work, such as the increase in internationally integrated work processes and the emergence of global virtual teams, can make a valuable contribution to IB research, specifically to the core idea that countries exhibit institutional distance, with important implications for a range of outcomes for multinational companies (MNCs). We contend that IHRM research has much to offer to provide a fuller account of distance and how it is viewed differently by individuals in MNCs, thereby contributing to the growing microfoundations lens in IB and beyond. In this paper, we give structure to the new patterns of work by positing that individuals differ in how they experience institutions: direct or mediated, holistic or partial, and enduring or transitory. We illustrate the relevance of these dimensions of positionality by building on prior work in IB, which has conceived of distance as a matter of similarity versus dissimilarity, equivalence versus non‐equivalence, as well as a question of how encompassing and how malleable institutions in the host country are. Combined, we seek to start a fresh conversation on how changes in work realities of the 21 st century make us see classic theoretical concepts in new ways, and how the core idea we develop in this paper – that the positionality of individuals shapes their perceptions of distance – raises a set of important questions for future research.